Thursday, February 6, 2014

06 Feb 2014

Yesterday afternoon I finally got some acceptable amount of sleep. I think I was out for about 5 hours which is the longest I've slept since being in Canada. I got a pizza for dinner, but it was wayyyy too big and I didn't even come close to finishing it. Unfortunately there is no microwave in my room and only a fridge, so it's either cold pizza or throw it away. As an aside, the Canadians measure their pizzas in inches.

I left with my coworker for the field site yesterday evening and his driving is HORRIBLE. Ahhhh, I feel completely unsafe when he drives. He follows too closely, can't maintain a constant speed, hits the brakes really hard any time a snow drift comes over the road. It was a stressful ride for me, but luckily there are no other cars on the roads most of the time so we made it fine. The truck is a F150 with the turbo motor in it so every time he accelerates you hear this SSSSsssss of the turbo spooling up abruptly. I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to do that. He must be getting 13 mpg with his driving habits.

The drill was still in setup mode when we got there around 8pm. We were told it would be ready quickly so we were ready to go. 9pm...10pm...11pm... still nothing. By this time we've left the core shack, which is a little office set up behind the drill rig to collect rock inside, and have gone inside the truck. The drillers were frantically going back and forth doing.. well i'm not entirely sure what.. I know at one point there was a problem with the boiler that they use to keep the water liquid. Temperatures weren't too horrible last night. They maintained at about -15 C (+5 F) for the entire evening, so not much different than Salt Lake weather in January, but considerably more windy. Currently it's about the same. Temperatures should continue to stay about the same tonight but in a couple nights the forecast low is -34. That sounds miserable.

My coworker and I talked about a variety of topics such as Canadian healthcare (which is infinitely better than American healthcare, seriously.. it's not funny how screwed up we do it in the states compared to our buddies up north), education, projects we've worked on and the differences between the SLC and Calgary offices.

At about 4am we finally got started drilling. We were able to rotary drill through some glacial material to about 16 meters before we had to pack up and head in at 6:30 am. I guess we're supposed to be coming in earlier than that because we were told we got back too late. No complaints from me!

I got back and after eating some french toast for "dinner" I was able to wake Jes up at about 7 am her time for a quick Skype chat, but I could barely keep my eyes open so it wasn't quite as long as I'd have liked. She hates mornings, more than I do, so the fact that she was willing to wake up at 7 to talk to me for 15 minutes really just made my evening .. or morning... whatever the hell I'm supposed to call it.

I then quickly fell asleep at 8:15 am central time and was able to sleep until 1:30. I think I may have fallen back asleep for another 30 minutes after that. Not quite sure, but then it was suddenly 2:30. I would have liked to sleep longer, but I was wide awake. I'm certain this will be bad for tonight as I hit a wall and feel tired at 2am but have to stay awake, but I'll live.

I don't like sharing a truck. I'm stuck in the motel room whenever I wake up early like this. I would definitely go exploring if I had my own vehicle.

Also of note I sometimes wonder if I should be a geologist. I feel like all other geologists want to talk about geology all the time. You get a group of them together and it just goes on and on and on for hours about projects they've worked on and deposits they find particularly interesting. Meanwhile I kind of just drift off and daydream of anything but geology. I don't want to talk about rocks or deposits. I want to talk about something else, so I usually kind of just end up in my own little world. Not that I mind this, it is just an observation. I think I'll go get "breakfast"

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About Me

I'm Brandon - I'm a 28 year old Geologist. I attended university at Utah State University and now live and work in Salt Lake City. Occasionally I get to see strange and unique places of the world for science!